Water supply for fire hydrants "starting to stabilize," incident commander says
Hours after officials acknowledged some Los Angeles County fire hydrants had run dry during the battle against devastating wildfires, the water supply has improved, the incident commander for the Palisades Fire said.
“It was a challenge early. No reports overnight of any issues with water (and) water pressure,” Jim Hudson of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told CNN’s John Berman. “We’ve worked around some mitigations for that, and the water system is starting to stabilize.”
Three million-gallon storage tanks in the Palisades area that service the fire hydrants had been proactively filled before the fires broke out, but it wasn’t enough to cover the “extreme demand,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Erik Scott said Wednesday.
About 20% of hydrants used to fight the Palisades Fire went dry Wednesday, city Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quiñones acknowledged during a news conference.
Mobile water tankers are now supplementing the supply, Hudson said.
“The whole drawdown on the system is really – when you have millions of gallons of water being used, then that takes its toll on the whole system at large,” Mike Lopez, executive board member of California Professional Firefighters, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
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